The present invention is related to providing access to telephone services. More particularly, the present invention is related to establishing a fixed wireless telephone jack through which the telephone services may be provided.
Providing telephone services to fixed locations conventionally involves installing landlines to the locations where telephone services are needed. Installation of landlines may take months in many areas of the world, such as in developing countries and in remote areas of developed countries. In addition to requiring a relatively lengthy amount of time, landline installation is expensive for the service provider as well as the customer in need of telephone service. Therefore, providing telephone services through landline installations is not necessarily a feasible option.
Providing telephone services through mobile phone cellular networks does not require that a landline be installed to the location where telephone services are needed, but wireless mobile phones themselves are expensive. Additionally, usage charges for wireless phones are typically much higher than those for a conventional landline telephone due to telecommunications regulatory provisions applicable to mobile phones and due to the limited availability of radio-frequency bandwidth. Furthermore, the portable nature of wireless phones may periodically result in lower communication quality than landline telephone service. For example, mobile phones are susceptible to dropped calls or noise while moving from place to place, and additionally the antenna of the wireless phone may be inadequate within buildings or other structures due to signal attenuation. Thus, mobile phones are not necessarily a desirable option for providing telephone services.
Embodiments of the present invention address these and other problems by providing a wireless device that is intended to be in a fixed location and that provides telephone service to a POTS telephone or other POTS device by communicating through a wireless telephone system. This allows a wireless telephone system to provide telephone service rather than running landlines to the end user to provide the telephone service.
One embodiment is a method of providing telephone service that involves recapturing a wireless mobile telephone from service. At least a wireless transmission and reception portion of the recaptured wireless mobile telephone is packaged to provide telephone service for a POTS device by communicating through a wireless telephone system. The packaged wireless transmission and reception portion is provided to a consumer to provide telephone service to the POTS device for the consumer.
Another embodiment is a wireless device for providing telephone service to a POTS telecommunications device. The device includes at least a transmission and reception portion of a wireless phone that has been recaptured from service and that provides telecommunications service through a wireless telephone network. The device additionally includes a converter for interfacing at least the transmission and reception portion of the wireless phone to a POTS connection.